Sep 7 – While his party (DMK) members challenged Paramahans Acharya, the head priest of Tapasvi Chhawani temple in Ayodhya, to lay hands on the DMK’s youth wing secretary, Tamil Nadu minister for sports development Udhayanidhi Stalin described the neglect of President Droupadi Murmu at the new Parliament building inauguration in May, 2023, as the ‘best current example’ of caste discrimination.
With the media hounding the minister with the same question about the BJP-stoked scandal, he stated that the Union BJP administration did not invite Murmu to the Parliament building opening, which was a clear case of caste discrimination.
Meanwhile, the mahant of the Ayodhya temple, who had set a bounty of Rs 10 crore on Udhayanidhi Stalin’s head and later offered to raise the sum, was burned in effigy by DMK members in Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri on Wednesday.
In Coimbatore, banners surfaced challenging Acharya to ‘touch’ Udhaynidhi Stalin.
The posters, which referred to Paramahans Acharya as a fake god man, were only part of the growing opposition to the Hindu priest’s death threat, as Tamil social media was flooded with messages, comments, trolls, and memes mocking the BJP leaders and many others who took offence at Udhayanidhi Stalin’s speech at a conference called for the eradication of Sanatana Dharma in Chennai on Saturday.
On Tuesday, he mentioned the Mahabharata’s Ekalvaya narrative in his Teachers’ Day statement. The relationship between the Dravidian Movement and the instructors who were just concerned with the future of their students and did not expect their thumbs as a reward was powerful and would last forever, he stated in the post on X.
Dronacharya, an archery teacher who practises caste discrimination, was mentioned in the Ekalvaya narrative, which he did not expound on in the X message. According to legend, Ekalvaya was denied archery lessons by the Guru, who sought his thumb as ‘Guru Dakshana’ after learning that he learned the technique on his own by asking Dronacharya’s blessings.
Though the Teachers’ Day speech had not previously caused a stir, certain new sites had blown it up to show his ideological inclination’s concealed aim. As a result, they are now referring to the message to emphasise that it was also a disguised attack on Mahabharata characters.
The BJP in the state, which did not originally condemn the Minister despite a social media frenzy in many north Indian states, put up wall posters in Coimbatore reading, ‘Sanatham is Our Breath of Life.’
On the other hand, J. Abdul Rahim, the state president of the Indian National League, went to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) headquarters in Purasawalkam to file a complaint against the Mahant of Ayodhya and demand his arrest.
He asked the NIA to set a good example for Indians by filing a case against Paramahans Acharya for offering a reward for anyone who beheaded the State Minister, but was told that such complaints were not accepted.
So Rahim filed the identical complaint with the City Police Commissioner’s office and also mailed it to the NIA for action.